agenda meeting #546 thursday, march 20, 2014- 12:45 pm … · thursday, march 20, 2014- 12:45 pm to...

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FACULTY SENATE

AGENDA MEETING #546

THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014- 12:45 PM to 2:15 PM

BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, ROOM 123

Call to Order

1. Approval of Minutes of Meeting #545 (Feb 20, 2014) Formal Acceptance of Faculty Senate Executive Committee Report (2.18.14)

2. Administration Reports

3. Guest: Les Stuedeman, Head Coach, UAH Softball Team (Nationally ranked 2nd in NCAA Div II !!!)

4. Reports

Senate Officer Reports

Senate Committee Reports

5. Committee Selections for Approval: Banish to Personnel; Wells: UG Scholastic Affairs

6. New Business

None

7. Continuing Business

Bills for Third Reading

a. Bill 373: Definition of Faculty Representation on University-level Committees

b. Bill 376: Implementation of Updated Parental Leave Policy

8. Additional Announcements

Adjourn

Faculty Senate

Senate Minutes 545-2-20-14 Page 1

FACULTY SENATE MEETING # 545 February 20, 2014

12:45 P.M. in BAB 123

Present: Wai Mok, Charles Hickman, Pavica Sheldon, Derrick Smith, Ryan Weber, Linda Maier,

Christine Sears, Anne Marie Choup, Bhavani Sitaraman, Mitch Berbrier, R. Michael Banish, B. Earl Wells, James Swain, James Blackmon, Kristen Herrin, Anna Benton, Peggy Hays, Phillip Bitzer, Luciano Matzkin, Debra Moriarity, Carmen Scholz, Peter Slater, Letha Etzkorn, Craig Cowan, Leonard Choup, Richard Miller, Lingze Duan, Seyed Sadeghi, Nikolai Pogorelov

Absent with proxy: Fan Tseng, Dan Sherman, Carolyn Sanders, Eric Seemann, Ellise Adams, Marlena

Primeau Absent without proxy: Chris Allport, Keith Jones, Joe Taylor, Deborah Heikes, Nick Jones, Ying-

Cheng Lin, Junpeng Guo, Kader Frendi, Jeff Evans, James Baird Guests: President Robert Altenkirch

Faculty Senate President Mitch Berbrier called the meeting to order at 12:45. Derrick Smith motions to suspend the rules for President’s address. Phillip Bitzer seconds. President Altenkirch Block Tuition There is a movement towards block tuition. Right now we charge tuition by the credit hour. The more credit hours you take the more you pay. There was a suggestion/recommendation from HURON to move to the same model that Tuscaloosa, Auburn, and Mississippi State use, which is charge by the credit hour from 1-12 hours. At 12 hours there is no additional charge until you get to some upper now, which we are going to peg at 18 hours, then charge by the hour after 18 hours. This pushes students who might take 12 hours to take 15, 16, or 17 credit hours, which means they will graduate at a faster rate. Tuscaloosa’s percentage of Full-Time enrollment at the undergraduate level is 90%, and their graduation rate is 66%. UAB charges by the credit hour and we charge by the credit hour. Both of our Full-Time enrollment percentage is about 73% and our graduation rate is 48%. We can push students to take Full-Time enrollment and there will be better graduation rates. Graduation rate right now is 6 years.

The other thing that the consultants wanted to do, and it sounds right, is when charging by the credit hour, a student signs up for 12 hours, so they get financial aid, and they can then go to Calhoun and take another course for cheaper. Hopefully this will stop that. Where is this? I’ve worked with the Chancellor and Board and we initially thought to implement this next fall. But if you look at the implications to make this revenue neutral, we will have to have too big of a tuition increase around 9 and 12 hours to make this work. So the plan right now is to phase it in over a 3-year period.

Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate


o Mitch Berbrier: Too big how, in terms of too punitive or too hard for them? o President Altenkirch: Too punitive. It would look like a huge hit all of a sudden. We will

reduce the slope of the 12 to 18 credit hours over the next 3 years. o Letha Etzkorn: Does this apply to undergraduate students only or to graduate students

also? o President Altenkirch: So far we’ve only done the arithmetic for in-state undergraduate

students, but we will get one for graduate students. At 9 hours it will be flat. Tuscaloosa stops at 16 hours instead of 18 hours. If you take 18 hours for 6 semester, and go to summer school for 3 summers, you can graduate in three years. So 18 is a magic number. I started to work with SGA to explain this and get them to help us market it.

Summer school People seemed okay with what we proposed last time. The write-up that we came up with talked about tenure track faculty, but it really is faculty, all titles. Summer school pay would be 10% of AY salary up to a cap of $7,500. The cap used to be $5,775.

o Derrick Smith: Does this go into effect this summer? o President Altenkirch: Yes. The deans have that so they know what it is. The trick is to

generate more revenue. There is no minimum class size, but we will watch it. Ultimately the provost will be the referee on what’s offered and what isn’t.

As far as the budgeting is concerned on summer school, the way it has worked is the beginning of the fiscal year, there was money put in the budget based on previous experience with summer school. Then you come around to the next summer, which is still in the fiscal year, and you run summer school, and then you have the real revenue from summer school for that fiscal year. A calculation was made as to what distribution should have been last fall, and then the money is redistributed. So there are some situations where one college would see a “budget reduction” and another might see a “budget increase.” We won’t do that anymore. We will budget summer school after the fact, after the revenue has come in, then send the revenue out so there is no shuffling going on. Summer school will be budgeted as a pool when we give the budget to the Board, and the budget will balance and when the money comes in for summer school, all of the readjustments for the pool are set out for the next fiscal year. This gets rid of the issue where someone’s budget might take a reduction because you go through about 10 months of the year before that happens. 4-day Summer Schedule We are not doing the 4-day summer schedule. I didn’t want to manage all of the excuses, the good and the not so good, as to why it wouldn’t work. We will continue to look at it and maybe in the course of the year we can come up with something that will work. Scholarship Matrix We’ve been making some adjustments on various aspects of tuition. Last year we made changes to the scholarship matrix to make it more attractive to students. One thing we will do this cycle is when you come in as a first time Full-Time freshmen, and you fit into that scholarship matrix, your scholarship starts in the fall and you can keep it for 4 years if you perform. We will offer incoming freshmen in the fall who might want to start summer school before that first fall, and say this one time, that scholarship matrix applies from the beginning of summer school to the end of the fall semester. It’s a marketing/recruiting hook to get someone started. And in some cases, a student might have to take or want to take some sort of preparatory course so that when they start in the fall, they start in the curriculum, and it gives them a leg up. Suppose a student takes 6 hours in the summer, and they have a 50% merit tuition scholarship from that matrix, when they take the 6 hours in the summer, they will have to pay 100% of that tuition. Then when they come in the fall,


suppose they take 15 hours. For those 15 hours they only owe us 7.5, because they have a 50% scholarship. So they pay for 6 in the summer and need to pay for 7.5 in the fall. That’s 13.5. But for 21 hours, from the beginning of summer school to the end of fall, they’ve taken 21 hours, but they only owe us for 10.5. But they really don’t owe us 10.5 because they’ve already paid for 6 in the summer. So they actually owe us for the 7.5 instead of the 10.5. So you’re actually recouping more money in the summer than you need and use it to pay for something in fall. Why do we want them to pay in the summer? Because what if they don’t enroll in the fall? The scholarship doesn’t really count for the summer, but it’s a way to entice them to come because it gives them a head start. The same thing will happen when get to this block tuition for somebody who starts in the summer but doesn’t have a scholarship. If they came in the fall and took 12 hours, they owe us for 12 hours, but if they start in the summer and take 6, they’ve already paid for 6. And then from 12 to 18 you don’t pay any more, so you really only owe 6.

o Charles Hickman: I ran it by our marketing people and they thought it was a great idea. o President Altenkirch: Some of these things are beginning to take hold. The admitted student

day, which happened 2 days ago, was our largest one in history. Madison Hall Architect The architect for Madison Hall is on board. We met with them earlier this week. They have some preliminary designs, designs being what the footprint might look like, what would be on each floor. There are no artistic designs yet, but are beginning to move into the design of what the building might look like. They’re on track to be done with the architectural design within the 5-month window.

o Richard Miller: Is that going to be Madison Hall or will it be a new naming opportunity with the funds?

o President Altenkirch: That’s under discussion. Madison Hall is named because of some in the community and in Madison County provided funds to build that building. So we will go by whatever the board rules are on demolishing a building and building something that is sort of a replacement for it. So we are working through that. Right now we are just calling it the Madison Hall replacement.

Vice President for Student Affairs We are working on what’s involved in putting that in place, which brings together all of the student services, affairs, and activities under one. It was another recommendation from HURON. It is a very common structure. I’ve been at universities with that structure and it works very well. The new provost will be here on Monday, and this is the structure that is in place at South Carolina where she is from.

Mitch Berbrier: Thank you. Faculty Senate Meeting 544 Minutes

Mitch Berbrier: Comments? Derrick Smith motions to approve the minutes. Charles Hickman seconds. Ayes carried motion. No oppositions.

We just had the last Faculty Senate Executive Committee meeting on Tuesday, and so you’ll see no FSEC report to approve. Another reason they aren’t there, because we had a question via email about why the whole Senate approves these minutes if the whole Senate wasn’t there. The by-laws don’t say anything about needing to approve the Executive Committee report, as far as I can tell. So we discussed it in the EC on Tuesday and nobody found it there either, and so I think we will do away with approving the Executive Committee minutes in Faculty Senate meetings. It


will still be available to everyone, but the approval will be done by the Executive Committee, by the people who were there. o Bhavani Sitaraman: Amazing. During the Frank Franzi time, or maybe even before that, we

(the sociologists present) used to raise this question every time, abstain from approving, and then we were looked at strangely every time. We asked how can we approve something that we were not a witness to? Well we were just confirming the Executive Committee’s work. So some people continued to abstain. I’m glad that this is happening.

o Richard Miller: I would like to offer a counter perspective. This needs to be double checked in Robert’s rules, not just in the by-laws, which I agree it doesn’t say anything about it. I believe that any executive committee of a governing body needs to offer an opportunity for all members to comment and to critique. Correct is how we view it but obviously you can’t correct it if you were not involved. But I think by not formalizing that opportunity it is a problem for the governing body. I think the approval of Executive Committee and Committee meeting minutes is a common thing. The Board of Trustees does it. It isn’t necessarily to correct the minutes but it is to formalize an opportunity for Faculty Senators to offer input and raise questions. It doesn’t usually take a lot of time.

o Mitch Berbrier: Sometimes it does. Phillip mentioned needing to check Robert’s Rules, which is why I mentioned we might be going to that, so we aren’t going to it yet because we need to check them. We can still possibly modify the way it’s done.

o Richard Miller: The only role of the Executive Committee, officially, is to set the agenda for the Faculty meeting.

o Michael Banish: You can say we are going to incorporate them instead of approve them. o Mitch Berbrier: We can also have the discussion of who said what in another forum.

President’s Report, Mitch Berbrier: 1. I received a revised BETA Policy document from the President that we’ve been waiting on. I

will forward it all to you. He sent it to me (the Faculty Senate President), the SGA President, and the Staff Senate President, and asked for comments back by mid-April. If you can send me any comments or questions that you have about it send them back to me in the same email if possible.

2. The Provost, Christine Curtis, starts on Monday. I’ve been talking about getting a list of things to say to her because at some point we will have a meeting to discuss Faculty Senate business. Turns out she wants to talk to me and Wai Mok on Monday. She says it’s informal but she wants to know what our priorities are. So I want to have a sense of your priorities from you so I can tell her. A fine, short list that’ important to everybody. She’s coming in with a strategic plan and she will have a lot of things to do so we don’t want to bombard her with too many other priorities. Two things on my list for the Faculty Senate are:

a. I want funding for Kala’s position to be made permanent. President Altenkirch only agreed to fund it for one year, and he said wait until next year for the provost to re-approve.

b. The other thing is the Handbook. I’ll make sure she knows how long we’ve been waiting for that.

o Charles Hickman: It sounded like, back in the Executive Committee meeting we had back in the fall semester, President Altenkirch said he was looking at it and would have it back by the summer. So I thought we were close. Do you have any idea where it is?

o Mitch Berbrier: He has been vague on it. Every time I ask him he says it’s coming, and I can’t order him to do it. We ask periodically. I’ve asked in several emails. I think he has just been too busy with too many hats. We could just ask him to focus on the by-laws and get that done. I’m not sure what the division of labor is going to be between the new


Provost and old interim Provost. But this is important and there have been a lot of things that have come up over the course of the year and we want to pass some bills and make some adjustments, and we are not sure which Handbook to follow.

o Richard Miller: It was in the Office of Counsel and I don’t think anything has been reported back by them so I’m not sure if it is just Bob.

o Mitch Berbrier: I don’t think he’s sent it to counsel yet.

So please send emails with offers on priorities. You can Reply All or just Reply to me.

o Michael Banish: The one thing that’s a continuing concern to me, we are always scrambling for money here. One of reasons for that is that our alumni donation rate is so poor. We get emails from students. There’s this disjoint between students being friendly with us and friendly with the University, in terms of donations and money that comes in to the place. That’s something that needs to be addressed. Isn’t our enrollment down from 3 years ago? The administration contacts the students for money and the say, “No,” but they’re friendly with us (the faculty), and that‘s a problem.

o Mitch Berbrier: Send me an email about that.

3. Our email discussion about the timing and the structure of meetings.

Kala is doing some benchmarking to see how other places do. How do they structure their meetings? How long are their meetings? How often do they meet? I’ve heard of different models. I spoke to President Altenkirch about this, about what happened last time with Gordon Stone and how once he left we only had 5 minutes left in the meeting. I think the problem is more structural and so we need to figure out how we want to organize our structure. In our by-laws, you’ll notice that it says that all of the minutes, approvals, all of the administration reports, and all of the discussion about those should be done within 30 minutes. We discussed this at the Executive Committee and everyone thought it was not nearly enough. There are other structures, though. President Altenkirch said at Mississippi State they had separate meetings; meetings for internal Faculty Senate business and meetings with the administrators. I spoke to the Faculty Senate President of UAB at the Board meeting and he said that the Faculty Senate President meets separately with the Provost prior to setting the agenda and they go through a list of what the Provost can talk about and for how long.

4. We do have some time constraints coming up because of a number of things. One is the

Provost might want to visit us and we might want to chat with her. Also, I have two guests scheduled for next month’s meeting, and Les Stuedeman wants to come talk about Staff Appreciation Day, but she promised to keep it short. a) Dee Childs wants to come talk about updates to IT and infrastructure. b) David Berkowitz is going to come talk to us about a new plan/a different way of

admitting Master’s students that will be more centralized and maybe more efficient. c) At the Board of Trustees meeting there was a discussion about our statewide pension

plan, for all state employees, teachers, and faculty members at the universities, and how it’s 9.5 billion dollars underfunded according to some estimate. I don’t know what those numbers mean and how they stack up relative to the whole pot, but I do know that these Board of Trustees meetings are prearranged and everyone knows what’s going to happen, but all of a sudden the Board of Trustees members were very concerned. So I’m going to ask Ray Pinner to come talk to us. Maybe in a join meeting with the Staff Senate


since this has to do with them too. I’ll ask him to explain this to us since he understands it.

So, that’s a lot of meeting time taken up on top of our own business. I’ve looked at the schedule and there aren’t many opportunities coming up to discuss everything that needs to be discussed. However, supposedly, we all have Tuesdays and Thursdays open times from 12:45 to 2:15, no teaching obligations or anything. Then there’s the whole summer. o Bhavani Sitaraman: Instead of lumping everything together into one category of

discussion versus things we have to vote on and things we need to listen to, if we push things we have to vote on to the summer, we may end up not having a quorum or we may end up with having people not interested. I continue to push for extra meetings being those meetings that are information sessions and regular meetings to vote.

o Mitch Berbrier: In the short term that may be harder to manage but in the long term it makes sense. I’ll try.

No other Officer reports.

Committee Chair Reports

Governance and Operations Committee, Phillip Bitzer Departments have been notified of expiring terms and a number of vacant seats. That should be done by the end of this month. Then we will start soliciting nominations for President-elect and Ombudsperson on March 1. Finance and Resources Committee, Charles Hickman I want to remind everyone that the deadline for submitting proposals for the Research and Creative Experience for Undergraduates and the Distinguished Speaker Series are both May 28. Thank you for getting the ones submitted that are already coming in. We are looking forward to evaluating them.

o Mitch Berbrier: Have you gotten anything from the Research Center? o Charles Hickman: Yes, I’ve had an inquiry. Have you heard anything? o Mitch Berbrier: No. o Charles Hickman: You were going to schedule a meeting with the President? o Mitch Berbrier: I have asked for a meeting and I have not heard back from Ray or Bob.

Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, Deb Moriarity We will meet a week from today to go through a good stack of course changes and course approvals. Remind your Department to get these in. The intention is to get these through and approved to get them into the fall schedule, but you can add some later and we will go back and do them individually by email.

o Mitch Berbrier: After it’s approved, it has to get to Janet Waller to put into Banner. Sometimes Janet is overwhelmed with other tasks and it takes a couple of weeks.

No other Committee Chair reports.

Faculty Senate Bill 373 This Bill is a revision of a resolution from last year. There are a series of preamble statements (“Whereas”). Phillip Bitzer motions to consider. Seconded by Michael Banish.


This was radically changed from the prior resolution. Bob Altenkirch rejected it last year because of the wording. The last paragraph is very similar to what was in the prior resolution but it is worded differently, and hopefully it is clearer. President Altenkirch rejected the prior resolution. He made it clear in the letter and afterwards when I spoke to him on behalf of the Faculty Senate that he didn’t like that we said “Faculty representation on university level committees initiated by the administration…shall be defined as faculty members appointed from the Senate”. He said it was too directive and this causes problems. I talked to the President about what he would accept. I asked if he was okay with having Faculty representation on the committees, he said yes. I asked how we could word it. The suggestion was made that we reword it, and we ended up with Bill 373. So I kind of rewrote it and sent it to the President. He edited it less for substance as for grammar and clarity. We discussed it in the Executive Committee meeting and there were some technical issues raised, so we sent it back to Governance and Operations. They worked on it and now here is this version.

Mitch Berbrier: Open it up to discussion.

o Richard Miller: With all due respect, I am really troubled by the bill as it is currently written. By mandate of the Board of Trustees, the Faculty Senate is the representative body of the faculty at the University in matters of shared governance. The previous bill, which was rejected, simply was defining what was ”official faculty representation,” and didn’t preclude other faculty from serving. It reestablished the statement that administration committees that claim faculty representation have to have at least members that were appointed by the Faculty Senate so that the usual suspects aren’t rounded up. I think personally we need to stick to that. This is about establishing precedence. We don’t know what future presidents or provosts will do. So I think we, as the representative body, need to establish ourselves as the representative body.

o Mitch Berbrier: What does this do to establish ourselves? o Richard Miller: The fact that the previous bill was rejected because it said faculty

representation is representation designated by the Faculty Senate is troubling. I understand trying to make something acceptable but I’m troubled by providing a slate of names to the administration and having them choose. If the Faculty Senate decides that someone is the appropriate representative to sit on a particular committee, that is the Faculty Senate’s representative whether they like it or not. If there’s a conflict of interest, then a request can come back from the administration for a new name for that reason and we provide another one. Giving a slate dilutes some of the import of the Faculty Senate in shared governance. We don’t have much power anyway.

o Letha Etzkorn: One thing I did note in this is that there isn’t a minimum. You can give a slate of one person if you really wanted a certain person on the committee. It says you can’t have more than… but there’s not a minimum. I understand the idea, but it doesn’t say that.

o Deb Moriarity: So you can give them a slate of one. o Mitch Berbrier: Phillip, I thought what you meant is here that they will ask for a slate of 6

for 2 people. o Phillip Bitzer: Correct. If there are 2 positions on the committee, they can ask for no more

than 6 names. o Letha Etzkorn: Well, you don’t have to provide 6 names. o Bhavani Sitaraman: Loopholes aside, I agree with Rich. On principal this is not what

representation means. I don’t give a list of candidates for someone else to pick someone to


represent me. I have a symbolic issue. There is nothing at stake here for the administration because they can still make the committee very large, they can add additional faculty. If we send 2 people to a committee of 15, we won’t have much slate, but we’ve sent who we want to symbolically represent us. By doing this, we are pretty much letting the administration control over the committee and we are getting a token voice by saying, you can give me three names, but I get to pick. I think it’s a huge signal that we are in a very subservient position when it comes to recommendation. I don’t want to accept that as a compromise.

o Richard Miller: Faculty Senate’s role is mandated by the Board of Trustees. As elected senators, your roles are to serve the faculty as a whole but specifically the faculty in your units. A handpicked faculty member assigned to a committee doesn’t have that responsibility to serve the unit or the college or the faculty as a whole. They have a responsibility of giving their own opinion. So the role of a faculty senator or a designated Faculty Senate representative on a university committee is very different than an individual faculty member that is assigned to it.

o Michael Banish: So why is that not in the preamble? This is the job that is mandated by the Board of Trustees for the Faculty Senate. That should be in the preamble, whatever the chapter and verse is. Therefore, this is why we are following it this way.

o Richard Miller: It sort of is. o Michael Banish: Well how about not sort of. o Mitch Berbrier: We can change that. Rich wrote this original preamble. o Michael Banish: It says Faculty Senate by-laws, not by the Board of Trustees. o Mitch Berbrier: That can easily be changed. Before we move on, do you want to motion to

change that? o Michael Banish: I don’t know exactly what the Board of Trustees says. o Mitch Berbrier: The Board of Trustees by-laws are long. So in the ideal that we get to choose

precisely who we want, it would still be the case that there might be a committee of 15 and we only send 1.

o Bhavani Sitaraman: That’s okay. We aren’t requesting size of the committee. I think it’s a symbolic statement that we get to choose who represents us. I don’t want somebody else who isn’t in the body and doesn’t know the rights of the body choosing who represents us.

o Wai Mok: I believe I asked for 4 names when Bob formed the Search Committee for the Dean of the Honors College. I asked the Faculty Senate body to send me 4 names from which Bob will select. What was your experience with that? Have they met? Did hey push you aside?

o Nick Pogorelov: You sent me. o Wai Mok: What is your experience? Are they pushing you aside? o Nick Pogorelov: No, absolutely not. I don’t think so. o Bhavani Sitaraman: I think it’s more the principle. o Richard Miller: There was a bit of controversy last year when I was Faculty Senate President

that a few senators had an issue. The issue is the following: I was asked to provide 3 names for 3 positions on the committee. I called senators, because it wasn’t during a meeting, and asked them if they would be willing to serve and if they were then I submitted those names. There were a couple of senators who didn’t like that. That I was “handpicking.” So I understand the discomfort with that, but I think that’s different than what this is. Because as the presiding officer of Faculty Senate there is some discretion given to the presiding officer of this governing body. That’s different. The President or the Provost isn’t part of this body. Providing them names is different from the presiding officer of this body deciding who should or should not serve.


o Deb Moriarity: I was wondering if one of the things Dr. Miller mentioned about conflict of interest was some of the problem that they were having with the original wording because it was very short and didn’t really give much explanation and the idea of saying official faculty representation shall be selected or appointed by the Senate. I wonder if the problem with that and why they rejected that was well there could be a conflict of interest, there could be a very good reason, why that person is not the best choice for this committee. So maybe more discussion with Bob about what the specific issues were versus with the previous one and the new one. And get him to understand our point of view. It’s not that we don’t want to just give a lot of people and you pick, but the Faculty Senate wants to select from the faculty body.

o Mitch Berbrier: He understood that. From their perspective, they are rejecting it for the obvious reasons: We might want to put somebody on there that they don’t want. So we can say it again and they are going to reject it. So if we say it again, and they reject it, as a symbolic point Bhavani makes a very good point.

o Deb Moriarity: An example of why it is important to be sure that somebody from the faculty is actually designated to be a faculty representative is when Banner was being implemented, someone who was not a faculty member was assigned as the Academic faculty representative, but found out after the fact. And then she quickly realized that she couldn’t speak to the issues that there would be.

o Mitch Berber: This bill wouldn’t let that happen. o Deb Moriarity: Right, but it’s another reason to be sure that we do something about making

sure that whoever is called the official faculty representative is a real faculty member. o Mitch Berbrier: He had trouble with the wording of official faculty member representative.

There might be a way that we can reword this that explicitly says that the official faculty representation is from the Faculty Senate but that isn’t the only thing to be called faculty representation. We talked about calling it the Senate representation last year, but if I recall, there was an issue with that, but it’s still an option. The idea is that the Faculty Senate is the official representative of the faculty, then the logic is that that would be the official faculty representative. He might still reject it and then we don’t have any guarantees that they will ask for a slate. The only downside is the practical matter: it’s rejected and we have nothing on which to demand any kind of representation on ad hoc committees. This allows us to represent ourselves. This is the compromise to make sure that we get some representation on these committees. We make the symbolic stand now, and say no we won’t change the bill, what happens next?

o Bhavani Sitaraman: We have some kind of a vote, but it’s not going to be a true representation because it’s not much of a vote. Symbolic is important because it is about shared governance. You can look at it 2 ways, from our perspective we are always worried about the optics and how administration will view us. Should we be flexible? Should we appear unreasonable? Let’s turn it around and show that faculty feels so strongly about this that it won’t be good for the optics of the administration to be too stubborn on this because it is an optics issue. Faculty will feel good. And faculty won’t be dominating the committees because administration can make them however large they want. The dialogue isn’t about just how we appear but how the administration will appear to us. They’re losing a symbolic battle but they’re also giving something to faculty. It’s in their best interest. If they don’t approve, well I don’t want to compromise.

o Mitch Berbrier: But what is the next step? o Bhavani Sitaraman: The next step is that they go on record as having rejected the bill again.

And then it’s up to the Senate to proceed.


o Mitch Berbrier: They’re already on record as having rejected it. They rejected the prior bill. It’s already done.

o Bhavani Sitaraman: Then it’s up to this body to vote on this and decide if it’s important or not.

o Mitch Berbrier: So you’re suggesting that we reject the bill and let it go? o Bhavani Sitaraman: I think we have to communicate strongly the reasons why we rejected

it. o Mitch Berbrier: But that doesn’t bind them to any action. o Bhavani Sitaraman: Ultimately, the body decides if they want to compromise and move to

the next level of rewording this bill.

o Phillip Bitzer: This isn’t Senate representation. It’s faculty representation. We just pick the faculty. So it doesn’t have to be anybody that’s in this meeting to serve on the committee. We just pick from the big pool of faculty.

o Michael Banish: I’m going to disagree with Rich and Bhavani and say that I can agree with

the President in this in that when you transfer the word over “official,” although there may be logic in the transferring of the word “official faculty representation,” it makes the other people that are on the committee seem non-official. You go at it the other way. I can understand why he rejected it if we said, “this is the official faculty representation.” I think there’s probably a bit of careful wording there that maybe we need to think about in some way.

o Mitch Berbrier: If anyone wants to make a motion to change the wording, that’s available. There are two options: we can change the wording, and anyone can make a motion to do that, or we just go to a vote. Does anyone want to make a motion to change the wording?

o Peter Slater: Is this the first reading? o Mitch Berbrier: This is the second reading. The first reading was in the Faculty Senate

Executive Committee. o Peter Slater: This is the second reading, so we get a third reading. At the third reading, we

can fiddle with the words? o Mitch Berbrier: Yes. o Richard Miller: Unless it’s unanimous and then it’s passed. o Peter Slater: Then the observation that I would make is that previous bill was rejected, so

we have nothing. If we get this bill passed then we have something, and if we don’t think it’s enough, then we can come back later and make it stronger.

Call to question. All those in favor of the bill as it is written now? 12 members All those opposed? 12 members How many abstain? 6 members Mitch Berbrier, Faculty Senate President, is in favor of this bill as it is written. Senate Bill 373 passes the second reading, which pushes the bill to a third reading. Mitch Berbrier: I would appreciate any informal feedback on it.

Senate Bill 376 It is only necessary because we don’t have our Faculty Senate Handbook. Submitted by Dr. Rich Miller. Phillip Bitzer motions to consider. Charles Hickman seconds.


President Altenkirch has seen this and he’s okay with it.

Call to question. In favor? Ayes. No oppositions. 1 abstention Call that the bill has passed.

o Pavica Sheldon: Question about the automatic one-year extension of tenure track. Why is it automatic? Does it mean that the faculty member needs to take this additional year to go for tenure and then if go up at original tenure date, is that considered early tenure?

o Richard Miller: That’s an upper limit, not lower limit. o Mitch Berbrier: It’s just an option. o Anne Marie Choup: I remember discussions about this and the idea was that the default

should be to extend so you do not have to make any special requests to extend. o Phillip Bitzer: In the by-laws elsewhere, this doesn’t prohibit you from going early. o Pavica Sheldon: So then it’s considered early. o Richard Miller: If this wasn’t in there, you would have had to make a formal paper request

for maternity leave and then another separate request to extend your tenure-clock. This just links them together. It doesn’t preclude you from going early. It just means less paperwork.

o Pavica Sheldon: Are people who go early treated different? o Charles Hickman: Yes. The standard is that it’s ordinarily meritorious in this college to be

early tenured. o Christine Sears: So if you get the automatic year, then if you go up for tenure at your original

tenure date, you are automatically considered early tenure and it’s not considered the regular tenure?

o Charles Hickman: No. o Phillip Bitzer: I would mention that we’ve already voted and passed this. o Mitch Berbrier: I think your concern is justified, but we want to pass this and once the new

Handbook is through then we can go back and revisit and change if needed. o Mitch Berbrier: I will go back and look at Robert’s Rules and consider if we have to make

any adjustments to today’s votes If so, I will let you know via email.

Deb Moriarity motions to adjourn. Michael Banish seconds the motion. Ayes carried the motion.

Faculty Senate Meeting # 545 adjourned February 20, 2014, 2:15 P.M.

Senate Executive Committee Minutes 2-‐18-‐14 Page 1

SENATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETING February 18, 2014

12:45 PM in Morton Hall 343 Present: Mitch Berbrier, Deb Moriarity, Wai Mok, Jim Blackmon, Phillip Bitzer, Charles

Hickman Guests: President Altenkirch Ø Faculty Senate President, Mitch Berbrier called the meeting to order at 12:50 pm. Ø Report from President Altenkirch Block Tuition Talked about the block tuition concept before. I basically asked the chancellor if we could begin to market it, and over the weekend, he and I went back and forth with an analysis. The problem with moving from where we are now, which is essentially dollars per credit hour, to block between 12 and 18 with no change in the cost, so to move from what we have now to that, is keeping the revenue neutral. It causes a large increase at 12 hours because you are depressing the cost at 15 and 18 hours so you must raise it elsewhere. Then, you must take into account the discussions with the board about tuition increase next year of 3%. Take the 3% and add it to our structure now and make that revenue neutral, it bumps revenue at 12 hours up again. The chancellor and I decided it’s too much at once. So, we’ve come up with a 3-year transition, so that moving from this year to next fall, the slope will of dollars per credit hour between 12 and 18 will depress. Next year the slope will depress again, and the next year the slope will be 0. That allows a smooth transition with a “usual tuition increase.” Went back and looked historically at the tuition increases over a 10-year period. 10 years ago there was a 9%+ increase, then it dropped for a couple of years to around 3%. Then it began to creep up, and for one year it was like 15%. Then it came down to about 7 or 8%, until last year when it was 4 something. We are probably for the next several years at 3-4% range. The transition accommodates that. I think we are pretty well set with him and the Board that that’s going to be the plan.

o Mitch Berbrier: It’s a bit more complicated to market, though. o President Altenkirch: Correct.

We would be in block tuition completely by fall of 2016. It’s beneficial because as the tuition between 12 and 18 starts to declines, it’s still beneficial; it’s just harder to explain. Right now, for the Merit Tuition scholarships, which are institutional funds by that scholarship matrix, the matrix says it’s up to 16 hours per semester. We will increase that to at least 18, or we might just get rid of the hour minimum altogether and just say, “This is the scholarship.” The other marketing deal is: take 128 hours and divide that by 18, then multiple 18 and 6 semesters, that is 108 hours. That leaves 20 hours. If you go to summer school for two or three summers, you can graduate in 3 years if want to do that. So we will use that as a marketing tool.

o Mitch Berbrier: Do you mean market it with the Merit scholarship? o President Altenkirch: No, just in general.

With respect to the scholarship matrix and block tuition, for the summer before a student becomes a first-time full-time freshman, we will consider that summer as part of their first semester in

Faculty Senate


college. This means that if you take courses in the summer before you enroll in the fall, the scholarship matrix applies and the block tuition applies, so it will be like the summer and fall are one thing.

o Deb Moriarity: So if a student takes 6 hours in the summer, and 9 hours in the fall, that would be 18 hours, and they would pay the tuition at 18 hours?

o President Altenkirch: Correct.

It works this way: suppose they are in the matrix at a 50% discount. They take 6 hours in the summer, but they have to pay for 6 hours in case they choose to abandon the fall enrollment. But if they enroll in the fall and they take 15 hours, it totals 21 hours, so they owe us for only 10.5 because we will give them a 50% discount. But they only pay us for 7.5 because we owe them for 3 hours from over the summer. So we get the money up front, and it’s a hook. It also works for the block too. Suppose they take 6 in summer, and they take 15 in the fall, from 12 to 18, they’ve paid us for 6 hours, and they only have to pay us the amount up to 12, so 6 more hours because 6 to 18 are the same. We are thinking it will look like a good financial deal. The other thing, I think, about the block is that it will keep a student who signs up here for 12 from jumping over to Calhoun because will have to pay extra at Calhoun.

o Mitch Berbrier: So the summer thing is only for their first year? o President Altenkirch: Yes. o Mitch Berbrier: Is the idea that the retention benefit is only in that year? o President Altenkirch: The driver for it is that it will benefit somebody who needs

remediation because they can take classes in the summer. o Deb Moriarity: That starts this fall? o President Altenkirch: Yes, we are working up the documentation now.

Summer school Summer school is what I last presented. A question came up about the 10%. If you think about someone who is doing only teaching, they have a full-load, which is 4 slots, plus they are on a committee, which is one slot, then they are now at 5 slots, which equals 10 slots a year. I will add that as a footnote to this document. The question was, “where did this split come from?” All of the revenue that is brought in from summer school is spent, so it’s an expenditure. On our expenditures, the negotiated overhead is 48%, but the rate we proposed based on an analysis, the one that we gave to AHS, is 54%. Approximately, our unrecovered overhead is about 10% of the sate funding, which we don’t get in the summer. So if you add that 10% to the 54% it’s something over 60%. So it isn’t unreasonable. I can’t give you an exact reason why it came out that way. The money that goes to the colleges is spent on college efforts and the money that goes to the provost eventually funnels through them one way or another. 4-day Summer Schedule I told the deans that we are not going to use the 4-day summer schedule. I don’t want to at this point, with all that we are working on, to manage all of the responses to all of the reasons why it will or won’t work. I’ve got a message that I will send out today or tomorrow. Madison Hall Architect The architect for Madison Hall has been selected, Nola Van Peursem. They are from Huntsville and have done work on the UAH campus. All of their subcontractors are local too so it’s an entirely Huntsville operation. Wai Mok: So the money stays in Huntsville? President Altenkirch: Yes. This afternoon is the first meeting to begin the design process. Hopefully we will have a design within 5 months. Their presentation was the most imaginative design.


Admitted Student Day/Advertising We had the largest admitted student day ever.

o Deb Moriarity: There are still problems with some of the logistics. o President Altenkirch: Our biggest problem is parking. Another problem was that only one

door was opened for the gym. o Deb Moriarity: Another problem that we see is that the time period that they have to

attend a class, if they want to, is overlapped with the college, so they randomly appear and it’s a little disruptive. Another one is that I’ve talked to many students and parents at different times who all had the same questions. In the past the same thing happened but there were only a few people to deal with. I have had about 15 this time. It was difficult talking to them and taking them on tours through our labs.

o Mitch Berbrier: Those numbers are very promising, though. What did we do? o Deb Moriarity: I think the phone-a-thons were a big help. o President Altenkirch: I think that the things we’ve been doing have had an affect. The

scholarship matrix, communication with the students is more organized, and Maxon has been on top of it. If you have some suggestions on a schedule send them to John Maxon. You could split it into 2 days. The problem there is that you want it to be a little crowded. All of these things are beginning to have some impact. We are putting an ad in the airport. It will be on the visual screens in the airport.

o Wai Mok: What about an ad on the radio? I hear other schools advertising, but not us. o President Altenkirch: Well, the question is who is the audience and how long do they

spend in their car? Generally, the public radio stations are listened to by adults. But we will look at that. We put up 2 billboards on I-65, one facing North and one facing South.

o Wai Mok: Did HURON say anything about advertisement? o President Altenkirch: No, their take is that the best recruiting tools are the web, which we

are fixing, and communication, a more systematic communication that if somebody contacts you then there should be a schedule to return message. So their take is the web and these communication tools that we are finally implementing with this software. Advertising is less effective.

o Deb Moriarity: I think advertising works for our graduate programs. o President Altenkirch: We have the traffic data for I-65, and the billboards will be up

during the peak time on I-65. Not 565, though, because those travelers probably know where they are. We are trying to capture the beach traffic on I-65. So we looked at the traffic patterns and pinpointed that.

o Mitch Berbrier: I-65 South in the state or here? o President Altenkirch: It’s not far from Huntsville.

Inclement Weather: Class Cancellations Mitch Berbrier: Question about the 10am thing when we cancelled classes for part of the day. Public schools have rationale when they cancel at 10am because they don’t lose a day, technically. Does that apply to us?

o President Altenkirch: No, that doesn’t apply to us. If the public schools don’t do half a day, they don’t get credit for the day. So they always make sure they get half a day in.

o Mitch Berbrier: So we get 10:00 am, too, but it seems to me that a better time for that is at the beginning of class schedules, so classes are from 9:30 am to 11:00 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and so if we start class at 10:00, it leaves some ambiguity. So I think that, unless we have this constraint, we coordinate with the class schedules.

o President Altenkirch: I think 10:00 am is chosen for people who have kids.


o Deb Moriarity: Then maybe we can go to the class period right after that. I had tons of emails and questions, and colleagues and I cancelled class because of it.

o Mitch Berbrier: There are different ways to go about doing it. One is classes that start at 9:20 am, just clarify they will begin at 10:00 am. Another is that staff and faculty are to arrive at 10:00 am, but classes start at 11:00 am. So there are different ways to do this to get some kind of acknowledgement of the class scheduled in the announcement so the information is out there.

o President Altenkirch: I suspect the time is picked based on what other entities around pick and the interactions people have with those entities.

o Deb Moriarity: Some of my students who live in Guntersville said that if they drop their kids off at 10:00 am, then they can’t get to UAH at 10:00 am.

o President Altenkirch: We can put something within the message. o Mitch Berbrier: Yes that would be a great improvement. o Charles Hickman: Are we looking at a makeup policy? o President Altenkirch: I asked Brent that because I don’t know. He said in the past not

much more was done than use the day between the last class and finals and use it as a study day if it is not used. I believe he’s working up a message to say use that.

o Charles Hickman: Apparently some of the night classes only have 14 classes this year, but now they’re down to 13, which includes the final. So I’m not sure if they’re looking for another class.

o President Altenkirch: I’ll double check with them again. Chamber of Commerce partnership Jim Blackmon: Engineers don’t know we are here. Years ago, Dr. Hawk, Director of the PRC, and I talked to the Chamber of Commerce to talk about the benefits and all of that, and the president at that time said that one of the things the companies never as us about is the opportunities for courses and stuff. That surprised us. So I wonder if we deal with the Chamber of Commerce much because they deal with these companies who don’t know we even exist?

o Deb Moriarity: When I was Graduate Dean, the Chamber had me talk about a couple of the things they had, but that was more for people they were bringing in outside, like summer programs and things.

o President Altenkirch: I’ve been involved in several academic development recruiting projects and they know we are here because we do a lot of work. There is one floating out there that we’ve put a lot of material into. We had two Boeing deals, but one didn’t go through. We were involved heavily in both of those, though. The Remington deal we were not involved in because that is a pure manufacturing operation and they’ve got their processes. The frustration with the Chamber is, go read the article on al.com about Remington and look at the quotes from people from the Chamber. They’re focused on job training, on 2-year institutions. We try to explain to them the benefits of this institution compared to Calhoun, but its’ like talking to a brick wall.

o Jim Blackmon: Their tone was polite, but they gave the impression that we don’t have what they need.

Ø Officer and Committee Reports President, Mitch Berbrier: I have very little to report. There’s one thing I wanted to mention from the Board of Trustees meeting. There is some issue that they mentioned in their discussion. They discussed our pension funds. Apparently, some external evaluation is that they are 9.5 billion dollars underfunded. This is for the entire state, not just the UA system. This is for the ERS. I think that’s based on some actuaries estimate. They have theirs and we have ours. I would like us to try to find out a little more about them. I want to ask Ray Piner to get us some information about that and them.


o Charles Hickman: When Ray came and talked to our committee, he said the University contribution is going up, close to 12%. We contribute 7.5%. He talked about that and said he thinks it’s a good thing. We actually have a fairly well funded pension system, by state standards and after the crisis.

o Mitch Berbrier: They made it sound in this meeting as if we were in the same boat as every other state.

o Charles Hickman: Last I heard was 60% funded. It means they have 60% of the assets so if everyone quit today, they would have 60% of what they would need to fund their obligations. Before the crisis we were up towards 90%, and that was thought of as the maximum. If they get over 90%, employees want increases in benefits.

o Wai Mok: So are they implying they will raise our contribution percentage? o Charles Hickman: The contribution for the university and the employee combined is

going up. It will be close to 20%. I don’t think they’re talking about increasing our individual contribution, but the university’s.

o Mitch Berbrier: I do not get these people who obviously have the credentials and the CLs to run such things, but everywhere gets it so wrong. Or is it just the state that is refusing to fund it properly?

o Charles Hickman: Yes, and that becomes problematic, too, in that, for one thing, most people in the United State no longer have a benefit plan, and so we start talking to the taxpayers about how money needs to go into the Public Employees Retirement Fund to fund these entirely lucrative retirement packages, and people get upset.

o Mitch Berbrier: You’re caught between the obligation that you have to the employees that you have because you’ve already said you would do this for them. What I don’t understand is that setup at some point that this is going to be the benefit, 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, why has it changed so much?

o Charles Hickman: Because of the prices. o Mitch Berbrier: I understand that, but the stock market has come back. So all of our

investments have come back since then. I’ve been here since 1996, and this has been an issue for the administration of this university, and every university in the state, as long as I’ve been here. Their contributions are increasing and I don’t get it. The system is set up at the beginning so why is it changing so much?

o Charles Hickman: Before the crisis, I think our pension fund was around 90% funded. But because of the crisis it’s gone down. But Alabama’s pension is a lot better than most of the other states and is relatively better managed.

o Mitch Berbrier: Well I’m going to ask Piner to come talk to us about that. o Charles Hickman: chicagobusiness.com has the info on pensions.

President-Elect, Wai Mok: No report. Governance and Operations Committee Chair, Phillip Bitzer: We are doing elections for expiring senate terms. There are 4 vacant seats, not counting the three in Engineering that have been vacant. These are 4 that we found. There are 2 in Nursing, 1 in Atmospheric Science, and 1 in Marketing and Management. There are also 2 At Large seats that don’t need to be there, but both of their departments needed senators so we shifted them over. So all that’s being taken care of now, and information has been sent out to the Chairs about the two senators who have not been assigned term expirations (Sadeghi from Physics and Computer Science). There are some questions about what these seats will fill because they’re vacant now and should be filled right now, which means their term expires at the end of the summer, so should they be filled now? The by-laws state it’s voted on by the senate, whether to extend them another year, or when their term actually finishes. Mitch Berbrier: There’s also something in the by-laws about staggering terms.


Phillip Bitzer: Yes, there is a vague provision where we can make it 1 year and not 2. I’m leaving it at the department-level to decide, especially for some like Marketing and Management who have 3 expiring terms now. The by-laws say there is a provision there to allow that, not that we have to stagger the terms. So all elections need to be done by March 1st. Then we will start with President and Ombudsman elections the next month. Expiring terms need to be filled by March 1. President and Ombudsman filled by the spring.

o Mitch Berbrier: We also have to start thinking about who will be running for those elections because it usually requires cajoling and writing people to run for both of those positions.

o Phillip Bitzer: Finally, the committee restructuring, we are waiting for the by-laws to come back and just playing around with format.

Undergraduate Curriculum Committee Chair, Deb Moriarity: Committee will meet on the 27th. I let all the deans know to have the course approvals for fall schedules submitted to their colleges by then. We will go through them then. Finance and Resources Committee Chair, Charles Hickman: I sent the calls out 3 times for Distinguished Speaker series. Not sending them out again. The end of the month is the deadline and then we will review them and give notice. Right now we will be in same situation as the last 2 years, meaning we will fund 100%. Undergraduate Scholastic Affairs Committee Chair, Jim Blackmon: Meeting with Janet about the pre-requisite overrides. We are trying to get an understanding of the waiver situation. I looked at the spreadsheet provided and looked at the number of waivers by different departments. Without normalizing it, it didn’t show anything. The bigger schools had more overrides. I will try to get the numbers normalized and see if that shows anything. Just looking at the spreadsheet isn’t really productive.

o Mitch Berbrier: We were supposed to meet with Janet, and then Jim got detained. I asked her about the process and to explain how overrides work. They have a system whereby those who have access to Native Banner, can go in and override and that’s a lot of people on campus. Every college has their own rules and every advisor has access, so anyone of them can go in and override. Janet generates a report at the beginning of each semester, after registration and after the semester starts, of people who have failed their pre-requisites. People who are taking the pre-requisites in the fall semester can register in the spring semester, and she can put it in there with a term for those people. And then she can track them and see if they failed the courses. Those reports are sent to the deans who then send them to the chairs. The problem is when you override the pre-requisites, it goes around the system. According to Janet, there are a number of problems. There are advisors and department chairs and instructors letting people in, so when there are these overrides, there are pre-requisite courses that people don’t think are important. She also thinks there are a lot of people who are unaware that you can have a pre-requisite with a concurrency, which means that instead of pre-requisite class, must take before or at the same time, also known as a co-requisite. Then there are folks who show up and talk to their advisors, and the advisors let people in. Our concern is a bit different from the faculty perspective. When you’re an instructor, who do you want in your class, and what do you do when people are in your class who aren’t prepared? Who is allowed to make these decisions? There are two issues here. One is tracking down where the problem actually is, and another is the process issue. How should the process be developed? Who is required to sign off? As a chair, I can go in and override any course in the university. But I don’t let anyone in who hasn’t talked to the professor or instructor. I think the professor and the chair should be working together.


o Deb Moriarity: We have the 2 advisors in College of Science, and they can go into Banner, the Associate Dean can, and the secretaries in each department can. The chairs don’t want to learn Native Banner. But our department has a form that has all of the different kinds of overrides you might need for something, which we got from Janet. The student fills out top and instructor has to sign and select the appropriate override. That goes to the staff assistant who will check with the chair if it’s an enrollment limit problem. But I don’t have to approve them if the faculty member can approve. The pre-requisite issue for us comes up a lot for transfer students where Banner isn’t seeing it as a pre-requisite. When we are looking at this as a problem, we need to find out where is the problem. Is it in a particular department? If so, you’ll never see that by the numbers.

o Mitch Berbrier: The numbers will lead you to ask questions and who to ask. o Jim Blackmon: The concern that someone brought up is if someone who doesn’t have the

pre-requisites to get into a class and fails, we aren’t being fair to the student. The impact on the student is the primary reason for looking into this.

o Deb Moriarity: At one time we were having a problem with Nursing overriding courses and putting students in our Biology classes when they didn’t have the pre-requisites for some of those. So we went to them and told them to stop and explained why. And it isn’t a big deal now.

o Mitch Berbrier: But as a matter of procedural control in the system you have, what is to prevent a professor or anybody else from letting in several students who don’t have pre-requisites into their own class?

o Deb Moriarity: If the staff assistant notices, she will point it out to us. There is a certain amount of ethics I have to presume my faculty have.

o Mitch Berbrier: If it’s possible, do the analysis and get the number and then go to each department and ask why they have the numbers that they have. Personally, I think there should be a university-wide policy on how to proceed with this. It’s also beneficial for new chairs.

o Charles Hickman: One anecdote and my philosophy is that if students want to take something out of sequence, then they have to pay tuition and they either pass or fail. I take students to Romania every summer. They now allow that to count towards business. We make no effort to cover the same curriculum that they cover in International Business and I don’t see a problem with it because I think they get more out of the trip and participating. It requires potentially 3 overrides. In order to take International Business, you have to have 3 pre-requisites. If we require all 301 classes, then we’ve eliminated juniors.

o Wai Mok: Business is not as strict as Science. o Mitch Berbrier: So what you’re saying is that the 301 classes are genuine pre-requisites

for the regular curriculum course? But not for your course? o Charles Hickman: Correct. Technically, in Banner, they are, though. Will a student not be

prepared for material that is covered in Romania because they didn’t have those three 301 classes? No, I don’t think it makes any difference whatsoever.

o Mitch Berbrier: Your curriculum is an internal matter to you. o Charles Hickman: I like having pre-requisites that the instructor can waive if they want

to. But the student needs to understand what they’re getting themselves into. o Mitch Berbrier: I don’t think anybody, or that bill that Rich wrote, wants to eliminate the

ability and the right to waive a pre-requisite. Jim, don’t worry about analyzing as much, I think normalizing the data is great, but you can convene your committee at any point in time and get their take on this. There is nothing wrong with your committee saying that based on all of these discussions, we don’t believe there is a need for this bill, or we don’t believe this is a Faculty Senate issue. Or, if they want to change the bill like request guidance from the university, or something like that.


o Jim Blackmon: The plan is to have something together to show them before we meet. o Deb Moriarity: The biggest problem is when one department overrides pre-requisites in

another department. o Mitch Berbrier: Yes, and that shouldn’t be allowed, but that isn’t what the bill is about. o Jim Blackmon: If the concern is that the student, not knowing any better, thinks they can

handle it but really they can’t, is it feasible to get the grade? I’m looking at hundreds of students who got an override and will eventually get a grade, and if we found there is no impact, then it doesn’t matter. If we found there is a huge impact then it’s a judgment call.

o Mitch Berbrier: You can collect data for years, and any information is valuable. But then you have the different interpretations of the data. Some people will say it’s a disservice to the student, while other people will say, well the student has to take the responsibility and learn the consequences. So you can still have that discussion without the data.

o Jim Blackmon: I want to come back with a sense about what the committee thinks. o Charles Hickman: The data is there. You can download it into different spreadsheets. o Jim Blackmon: Right, and link them, etc. But I don’t know if we have the resources and

the time. I keep hearing things I’m not familiar with. I hear we are writing lots of waivers, but what is the percentage?

o Mitch Berbrier: The main thing here is the bill sent back to the committee. Convene with the committee and see what they think and what they want to do next before you spend too much time researching.

o Jim Blackmon: Also, my on-call issue. I am a Research Professor, which means I am here on funding. If there is no funding, I won’t be here and I go on-call. So someone will need to take my place as Chair of this committee. I think I have about 3-6 more weeks. I am now on 30 hours a week.

o Mitch Berbrier: Work that out with your committee. Faculty and Student Development Committee Chair, Fan Tseng: Absent Ø Items Parliamentarian role I have asked a couple of people and no one seems to be interested in it so far. I’m not 100% sure we need to have one. I kind of just want to let it go at this point since it’s getting to the end of the Academic Year and also because people are really busy.

o Phillip Bitzer: ‘Reads Parliamentarian role from by-laws.’ o Mitch Berbrier: If you know of someone in the Senate who knows the rules, let me know

and I’ll talk to them secretly. Senate schedule inquiry Appendix L in our by-laws says something like all bureaucratic stuff plus President reports get 30 minutes. To me, that’s ridiculous. Once we get into discussing substantive things, it’s not his fault. I can stop him, but I don’t want to. So we all want to make sure we get everything done and that we get to our Senate Bills and then discuss things that the President brings up.

o Phillip Bitzer: Strictly speaking, all of that – the President’s report and our discussion of it – gets 30 minutes.

o Mitch Berbrier: To me, that’s obsolete. There is a provision for me, as the President, to call special meetings at any time. Kala is researching other universities’ Faculty Senates and how they do things. I emailed UA system, and UAB has an interesting take on it. UAB Faculty Senate President has a meeting with Provost before the Faculty Senate meeting to discuss what will go on the Provost agenda, and he decides what to discuss at the meeting. This is something that ideally would become part of our by-laws. I’ve


discussed it with President Altenkirch. He’s been so worried about taking too much of our time. His view, or recollection at Mississippi State, was that they had separate meetings structured for administration reports, and separate reports for internal business. That was their structure. Personally, I like that model better. I think the problem to me is structural. Right now we happen to be going through a lot of changes. Our President is very analytical, which is great, because he talks through things.

o Deb Moriarity: For some of those things, it’s helpful to know the data and thought process that’s gone into some of these things. As opposed to him coming in and announcing what they are doing.

o Mitch Berbrier: And I think it’s good that they’re getting the input on these things. o Charles Hickman: I enjoy it and it’s worthwhile to me to be in the room with President

Altenkirch and hearing what he says. I think we give him as much time as is reasonably accommodating.

o Mitch Berbrier: There are different opinions, though. I think it can be worked out structurally. It has been stressful with all of the new things he’s implemented. But I think it’s worthwhile to investigate these options. I told him we are having these issues and he’s very open to having special meetings.

o Charles Hickman: A benefit for that is if you call a special meeting for the President to talk to us about something, we won’t need a quorum because we won’t be acting on anything.

o Deb Moriarity: I don’t see a problem with how it is now, although I think it would help move along quicker if we just cut off the questions.

o Mitch Berbrier: To me, the questions are important. It gives him our feedback. o Deb Moriarity: Right, some of them are very good. Some of the things he’s presented are

nice to know, but don’t necessarily need to be reported. o Mitch Berbrier: Or in as much detail. The other issue is that he can just report to us in the

Executive Committee and it just be in the report. o Deb Moriarity: Or maybe he just doesn’t go into as much detail about updates. o Jim Blackmon: My impression is that he’s taking the initiative to come tell us about

things. We aren’t taking the stand about asking him to tell us about things, so maybe he’s going to say more than he should. I appreciate it when the administration is sharing. I like to think that we are positively reinforcing the things that we want. If we are appreciative and positive, over time, we won’t be shut out. I like the idea of administration being open and giving us reports on what they’re doing, and why. In places where this is done, there is a high performance out of its people, but in once that don’t, they get low performance.

o Mitch Berbrier: And from his perspective, it’s probably not because he likes to share so much, but that he knows he will get better performance ad it prevents complaints down the road. The danger in cutting him off, or saying he can’t speak about things, is that he will say, “well you didn’t want me to talk about it but now you’re complaining.”

o Jim Blackmon: Of all the systems I’ve worked under, the transparent ones work better, although they take longer.

o Mitch Berbrier: When you’re open, people can get on board. o Charles Hickman: A lot of issues that bills used to address, we don’t have to do anymore

because you, as Faculty Senate President, can go talk to President Altenkirch and it gets taken care of.

In terms of time, Bhavani made a good point in her email. Why do we approve the Executive Committee minutes in the full Senate when 90% of the people weren’t there? I don’t see anything at all about the Executive Committee reports in the by-laws. There is definitely stuff about the Faculty Senate minutes. But I don’t understand why we handle the Executive Committee minutes.

o Charles Hickman: Ideally it would cause the members of the Senate to read the minutes and that would be valuable.


o Mitch Berbrier: We can provide it to them and tell them to read it, but they just won’t have to approve them. I think we can start with this meeting.

o Deb Moriarity: Right. If anyone should approve our minutes it should be us. o Mitch Berbrier: The problem might be in Robert’s Rules.

BETA Report The email from President Altenkirch asked for comments by mid-April so there’s no rush on this. Does anyone have any comments or anything to discuss?

o Charles Hickman: I read through every line of it this morning. I understand the concerns that some senators have in regards to the policy and accumulating this information and keeping it, but at the end of the day it doesn’t make any difference. This only formalizes written concerns, because if something is reported anywhere, it will be written down somewhere.

o Mitch Berbrier: I think the concerns were more along the lines that part of the process involved letting people know that they were a threat without having any due process. If you’re not a threat and you don’t know where it is coming from, then you can’t defend yourself. The other thing was the committee structure itself. There was concern that there wasn’t enough faculty or Faculty Senate representation. From what I’ve seen, there’s representation from all parts of the campus.

o Charles Hickman: The only substantial change I saw was the records not being maintained by the Office of Counsel. I remember that being a concern. As part of the record, there is no recourse, there is no procedure for being informed that you have been reported as being a potential threat, but I don’t think it makes any difference. Having a procedure in place is valuable in two respects. One, if it’s communicated that people know they have this option, is it going to be abused? Every rule is, so yes.

o Mitch Berbrier: Right, but this is different because this can have career implications. o Charles Hickman: That’s why the information should be secure. So they talked about

purging of the information after a certain period of time. The second thing is to defend against lawsuits.

o Mitch Berbrier: That’s part of the cynicism. That this is really in place for the administration to cover themselves, not really to assess and prevent threats, which is really what it’s supposed to be about.

o Deb Moriarity: For the past few years they have had things that worked through this, they’ve taken steps, and assessed whether things were a threat or not, so we do need to have that process.

o Mitch Berbrier: The other thing was related to not knowing who your accuser is. If you’re an untenured faculty member, apparently this information will go to your Dean, but you don’t know what this information is. The Dean is in the chain of decision making for your tenure. So the whole process becomes hard to address in terms of evaluation for tenure. What I’m going to do with this is forward to the Faculty Senate and solicit comments and concerns. Also will personally send it to Ramon Cerro since he was so heavily involved.

o Jim Blackmon: This says “Confidential Draft.” o Mitch Berbrier: That’s a good point. o Jim Blackmon: Also, I assume this was something we felt compelled to do so I’m a little

unclear what our concern is. Is it the lack of someone being under extreme risk category and not knowing it?

o Mitch Berbrier: This predates me. The revision began, I think, before Rich’s presidency. So I’m not 100% clear. I think the problems were related to the makeup of the BETA committee, whether there were enough faculty on it and how they’re appointed, the inability/ability of people to make unfounded accusations, and the closely related


inability for people to defend themselves. Because it’s something that is put on your record and you don’t know what it is.

o Jim Blackmon: I got the impression that the faculty wanted more faculty on that committee.

o Charles Hickman: In regards to the confidentiality of the records, there is probably a valid institutional reason for maintaining those records, but once an assessment has been made, and no action was taken, that becomes part of your personal file, and the Deans will have access to that but you won’t. And also, who does have access to that? Whether you’re up for tenure or if you transfer to another school, like UAB or UT. It’s on your record but you don’t know it. I don’t know how to address that. I don’t know if there is a way to have a process to address that.

o Mitch Berbrier: Someone suggested having an ombudsperson having access to it. o Charles Hickman: Which is fine, too, but that’s one more person who has access to it. o Mitch Berbrier: Right, but their role is to defend. o Jim Blackmon: I would be more comfortable with the attorneys in charge of this because

of attorney-client privilege. o Charles Hickman: There is no attorney-client privilege in that respect. The attorney-client

privilege with the University is with the University. They have the University at best interest, not us individuals.

o Jim Blackmon: Would they be more inclined to be protective of that information, rather than just a bunch of people or a committee?

o Charles Hickman: Yes, without question. o Mitch Berbrier: So the confidentiality thing I will need to look at more closely with the

President. Provost The new Provost is coming on February 24th. At some point, I will request, or she will request, to meet with the Faculty Senate. I would like us to be prepared with questions. She will have a million things on her plate. We have to figure out what we want to prioritize for us, for the Faculty Senate and for the faculty. I want on her radar screen Kala’s position, to make the position permanent because right now, it’s only funded for one-year. But if we make it permanent, it frees her staff. We won’t have another meeting before she comes.

o Charles Hickman: The single biggest issue in my college is who will make the tenure decisions this year. They’re due March 15th.

o Wai Mok: Brent told me it will be Bob this year. o Charles Hickman: That’s good to know and it makes sense for two reasons. One is that

she doesn’t know and two is that it gives her some cover. o Mitch Berbrier: And the third is that she has a million other things to work on. If there’s

anything or any ideas you have, circulate them via email. I want people to tell me what they want me to say. I also want to be prepared. So we can have them ready and be prepared with a concise list of things to focus on with her. I will open it up to the entire Faculty Senate and put on the agenda for Thursday.

Ø Approval of the agenda for the Faculty Senate meeting. Mitch Berbrier: I am going to add the meeting structure information. Approved. Ø Other items? Jim Blackmon: Rich brought up a situation of residency about someone voting. That puzzled me. If he’s not here, does that mean he’s funded but working somewhere else?

o Deb Moriarity: Yes.


o Charles Hickman: What I understand is that funding comes through the University and they are paying him a salary but he is working elsewhere.

Meeting adjourned at 2:45 pm

FACULTY SENATE

Faculty Senate Bill 373

Definition of Faculty Representation on University-level Committees

(Revision of FSR 12/13-04)

Bill History:

Sept 13, 2013 – submitted to President-Elect Mok by Mitch Berbrier

Nov 14, 2013 – before FSEC for initial consideration; sent to Governance & Operations Committee for revisions

January 14, 2013 – returned to President Elect Mok by Philip Bitzer, Chair, Governance & Operations

January 23, 2014 – before FSEC for First Reading

WHEREAS, the Faculty Senate is the representative body representing the faculty for the formulation of university-wide policy and procedures in matters relating to institutional purpose, general academic considerations, curricular matters, university resources, and faculty personnel, and

WHEREAS all issues of university-level governance affecting the faculty at large should go before the Senate before implementation, and

WHEREAS, the Faculty Senate will participate in the selection of academic administrators (including but not restricted to the President, Provost, Vice-Presidents, and Deans) and in alterations of the academic administrative structure, and

WHEREAS Faculty Senators are the official representatives of the faculty to the University Administration, and

WHEREAS these and other foundations for faculty representation are enshrined in the Faculty Senate bylaws,

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that when university-level ad-hoc committees are initiated by the administration concerning issues of university governance (e.g., hiring committees), the appointing administrator shall request from the Faculty Senate a slate of faculty nominees whose number is not to exceed three times the number of appointment positions, from which the appointing administrator shall select to represent the faculty,

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the appointing administrator may appoint additional faculty members to university-level ad-hoc committees concerning issues of university governance who are not on the slate of nominees submitted by the Faculty Senate in order to ensure diversity, appropriate expertise, disciplinary representation, and/or any other characteristics established by the appointing administrator as necessary to address the purpose of the committee.

Mitch

Highlight

Mitch

Highlight

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA IN HUNTSVILLE

FACULTY SENATE

Senate Bill 376: Implementation of Updated Parental Leave Policy

Bill History: Submitted by R.S. Miller on 01/14/2014

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WHEREAS: An updated parental leave policy was developed by the faculty in coordination

with the Office of the Provost and others within the university Administration,

and

WHEREAS: An effective and uniformly applied parental leave policy is important for the

faculty community, as well as planning within academic departments, and

WHEREAS: This policy has been approved by the Faculty Senate and incorporated into the

new Faculty Handbook draft that was submitted to the Administration in 2013,

and

WHEREAS: The draft (2013) Faculty Handbook is under review and will not be approved or

go into effect until an unspecified future date, and

WHEREAS: To date, parental and maternity leave has been non-uniformly applied across

campus with variations at the discretion of Chairs, Deans, and Provost, and

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

That the Faculty Senate requests that the Parental Leave policy as described in the 2013 Faculty

Handbook draft (Section 9.7) be implemented immediately as university policy, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

That this policy consist of the following (taken from 2013 draft Faculty Handbook):

Parental leave is designed to serve two purposes. On one hand, it allows faculty members to take care of

the substantial responsibilities and health issues related to child birth or the placement of a child for

guardianship or adoption. On the other hand, offering such leaves benefits the university by facilitating

the attraction, retention, and long-term productivity of high-quality faculty.

Eligibility. A full-time faculty member with at least one academic year of service to the university is

eligible for parental leave in the event of: (1) the birth of his or her child, (2) the birth of a child to the

domestic partner of the faculty member, or (3) the placement of a child under the age of 7 with the

faculty member for guardianship or adoption. If both parents of the child are faculty members of the

university, only one parent may take the entire 15 weeks of full-time parental leave (or an equivalent

amount of leave on a part-time basis) for a given child. An individual requesting leave under these

circumstances will provide documentation that he/she will be the primary care giver during the leave

period. With the approval of the Provost, the two parents may split the leave. Parental leave is not

granted for pregnancy-related disability preceding the birth of a child, which is granted in accordance


FACULTY SENATE



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with the sick leave policy (Section 9.6, 2013 draft Faculty Handbook) and shall not affect a faculty

member’s eligibility for parental leave for the birth of that child.

Timing and duration of leave. A parental leave must commence within 4 months of the birth of the child

or the placement of the child for guardianship or adoption for a faculty member taking parental leave,

except in cases where both parents are faculty members and split the leave. Full-time parental leave

consists of 15 weeks of full-time leave from all faculty responsibilities. An equivalent amount of part-

time leave may be substituted for full-time leave; the latter will be referred to as “flexible parental

leave.” For example, under flexible parental leave, a faculty member whose leave commences near the

end of spring semester, could elect to take one-third of the leave as five weeks of full-time leave to

finish out the spring semester, followed by taking the remaining two-thirds of the leave by working part-

time the following fall semester. For faculty on academic year appointments, the summer will not count

toward the 15 weeks of full-time leave (or equivalent) to which the faculty member is entitled.

In cases where both parents of the child are faculty members eligible to take parental leave, the parents

may choose to have one parent take the full 15 weeks of full-time equivalent leave or may submit a

request to split the leave between them (e.g., one parent could take 10 weeks and the other five weeks of

full-time leave). In such cases, the parent who takes the leave first must begin the leave within four

months of the birth of the child or the placement of the child for guardianship or adoption for a faculty

member taking parental leave.

Parental leave also is not granted for periods of medical disability resulting from child birth but

extending beyond the 15 weeks of full-time leave (or equivalent). Under such circumstances, the faculty

member may apply for sick leave (Section 9.6, 2013 draft Faculty Handbook).

The first 12 weeks of any parental leave, or of the combined periods of sick leave for pregnancy-related

disability preceding the birth of a child plus parental leave, or of combined periods of parental leave

plus sick leave for disability resulting from child birth are deemed to be leave under the Family and

Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA).

Request and approval. In order for the university to make adequate provision for instruction, a faculty

member who plans to take parental leave must notify his or her department chair or equivalent in

writing of his/her intent to take parental leave, with copies to the dean and Provost. Such notification

must be made within three months of confirmation of a pregnancy or as soon as practicable after

learning of the placement of the child for guardianship or adoption. The faculty’s written notification

must include a proposal for when the leave will begin and, if the faculty member is requesting flexible

parental leave, a proposal for how the leave will be taken. The exact terms of the flexible parental leave

will be negotiated between the faculty member and the department chair, who shall submit a written

summary of the terms of the leave to the dean and the Provost.

In cases where both parents are faculty members who are eligible for parental leave and the parents

want to split the 15 weeks of full-time leave or equivalent between them, both faculty members shall

submit a request detailing how they propose to split the leave to the Provost and their respective

department chairs, with copies to their respective deans. The Provost or his/her designated

representative is responsible for consulting with the department chairs and determining the terms of a

split leave.


FACULTY SENATE



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The Provost has final authority for approving parental leave requests and shall grant all requests for

parental leave from faculty members who meet eligibility requirements for such leave. However, the

Provost may modify the specific terms of flexible parental leaves and split leaves requested if the initial

request is not practicable.

Pay Status. The faculty member will receive his or her full normal salary and benefits during the leave

period, even if designated as FMLA leave. Faculty members on academic year appointments will not

receive parental leave pay in the summer.

Coverage of classes. If replacements are needed to carry out the instructional responsibilities of a

faculty member on parental leave, the compensation for those replacements shall be allocated by the

Provost from the Faculty Leave Account (See Section 9.5, 2013 draft Faculty Handbook).

Extension of tenure clock. When a tenure-track faculty member is granted parental leave, an automatic

one-year extension in that faculty member’s probationary period clock shall be granted in accordance

with Section 9.6.3.6 (, 2013 draft Faculty Handbook).

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